Home sweet homw...surprisingly

Here I am and I can not quite believe that I am. Home always has that timeless quailty that makes one feel that they have never gone away so thinking back to the series of events which so hastily finds me here is a strain on my dire memory even though it happened this past weeek.

Snow is indoubtedly the main reason, buckets and buckets of snow, in a twist of rather cruel irony, my favourite of god's precipitations and one on many a dry alpine night I have prayed for prevented me finishing my trip by land. The whole of the north of Iran is buried beneath metres of snow preventing any form of transport from getting anywhere thus most likely including my train from Tehran to Ankara. This left me with a decision, I could risk going to Tehran hoping everything will thaw but in doing so due, to financial restrictions in this country, would burn all my bridges in getting home if the train did not run. East was Iraq and west Pakistan, two countries I believe deserve a rather wide berth at the moment. So south it was to the sunny smugglers town of Bandar Abbas, a seedy town with the atmosphere of unpredictability sorely missing in the rest of Iran. Here was my gateway town to Dubai, a short hop across the gulf, and sweet financial freedom and see where it takes me.

Having been here in Dubai before and finding it a rather souless place in the blazing sun the addition of torrential rain persuaded me that my original idea of a couple of days on the beach should be scrapped and an immediate plee for a ticket to Dublin asap was happily granted at ticket sales. So after a meer thirteen hours plane watching in Dubai airport I hopped on an aerlingus flight and a degrading strip search later found myself a home for breakfast, a distance ten days ago i planned to do in 8 months I managed to do in 6 hours, its a funny old world.

Regrets you may ask, never, who knows what amazing adventures and oppurtunities this decision could lead to and what catastrophies i have avoided. Life is most definately too short for regrets. So in a briefer then expected sign off, that is that, 9months, 9000km, 9 countries and a fair few stories later I am nestled back in Blackrock with night time border crossings and kalashnikov waving guards a distant memory!